In this Section

Mary Frandson

What excites me about teaching is being a privileged witness to students employing the intimacy of language to describe the world and their participation with it, and by doing so, coming closer to saying who they are. In both my teaching and research, I’m interested in the multifarious ways individuals conduct meaning from experience through the use of language not just in text, but through song, art, blog posts, and digital technologies. I’m especially interested in the endless possibilities of hybrid lyricism, experimental poetry, and quantum poetics. The questions I engage with in the essays and poetry I write involve the complex relationships between literature and science, and how scientific data can provide provocations that render aesthetic realizations. What compels me into other areas of interest (post-modernist poetry, action paintings, abstract expressionism and surrealism, the narratives of photographic essays, and spiritual writings of the saints and mystics) is how both artists and writers have met the challenges of discovering new metaphoric potentials. And since on my bookshelf next to the “Handbook of Poetic Forms” stands “The Complete Handbook of Pro Football”, I’m enticed to momentary breaks to delight in sports literature, and have been rumored a time or two to take my classes out onto the football field to re-enact the pass-play language of Hail Marys, “Bumerooskies,” the “Hook and Ladder,” and “Statue of Liberty.”

Selected PublicationsNewspaper articles, sports writing, editorials, narrative journalism, interviews, copywriting editorials, and poetry have appeared in The Paynesville Press, The Record, Studio One, The Sportsman’s Guide, MARGIE: The American Journal of Poetry, and The Bellevue Review.

Current Book-Length ProjectsAbsolving Toxcities – a manuscript of poetry that cogitates the relationship between the disease of cancer and one’s humanity; and Saints Among Us - a collection of poetry lit with the miraculous and humanistic qualities of saints that could be adopted into one’s everyday life.

Editorial ExperienceEditor-in-Chief of Studio One. Editor and Trafficking Coordinator for The Sportsman’s Guide.

AwardsThe Power of You Teaching Award from Saint Paul College, Finalist for the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry from Bellingham Review, Above and Beyond Award for Excellence in Editing from The Sportsman’s Guide, and 4-time Gold Medal Award Winner from Columbia University Press for Studio One.

Fall 2016
Courses

CRN: 42622
4 Credit Hours
Instructor: Mary E. Frandson
From the first conception of a New World to the latest re-envisioning of America, this course will survey a kaleidoscopic view of adapting American literacies through the visual arts, maps, collage and photomontage, letters, cartoons, social networks, hip-hop ballads, film, and the language of campaign speeches and inaugural addresses. We will explore how literary genres grow out of a need for expression of what it means to be an American, and question whether or not there exists a philosophy that shapes an American intellectual identity. The writing load for this course is a minimum of 15 pages of formal revised writing. This course satisfies the Writing Across the Curriculum Writing Intensive requirement.

Schedule Details

CRN: 43474
4 Credit Hours
Instructor: Mary E. Frandson
From the first conception of a New World to the latest re-envisioning of America, this course will survey a kaleidoscopic view of adapting American literacies through the visual arts, maps, collage and photomontage, letters, cartoons, social networks, hip-hop ballads, film, and the language of campaign speeches and inaugural addresses. We will explore how literary genres grow out of a need for expression of what it means to be an American, and question whether or not there exists a philosophy that shapes an American intellectual identity. The writing load for this course is a minimum of 15 pages of formal revised writing. This course satisfies the Writing Across the Curriculum Writing Intensive requirement.

Schedule Details

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Day(s)

J-Term 2017
Courses

J-Term 2017
Courses

Course - Section

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Days

Time

Location

Spring 2017
Courses

CRN: 22292
4 Credit Hours
Instructor: Mary E. Frandson
Get ready to stamp your passport! This course explores historical, political, social and revolutionary events and cultures from around the world channeled through poetic voices throughout the century. As Williams Carlos Williams once said, “The act of writing is to reveal,” and poetic examination at its best reveals the complex lives and the rich cultures of people from around the world, including Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, Palestine, Lebanon, and Europe. Close readings of poetic text provides an opportunity for today's scholar to deepen his or her understanding of the human condition, as each poem offers a new perspective world view. Experimentation with poetic forms is also encouraged to lead students to discover their own creative voice on the page. Students will closely read a handful of poetic text including: LANGUAGE FOR A NEW CENTURY: CONTEMPORARY POETRY FROM THE MIDDLE EAST, ASIA AND BEYOND and THE NEW EUROPEAN POETS. The writing load for this course is a minimum of 15 pages of formal revised writing. This course satisfies the Writing Across the Curriculum Writing Intensive requirement.